


Drinking Holidays

by Lynx22281



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Implied Dean Winchester/Lisa Braeden, POV Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1313119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynx22281/pseuds/Lynx22281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since 2006 there have been three major drinking holidays on the Dean Winchester calendar.  Sam can't figure out what prompted the fourth one that was added just a few years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drinking Holidays

**Author's Note:**

> I realized AFTER I wrote this that two of the dates I made up are actually listed on Supernatural Wiki. I tried to go back and change it, but the Wiki dates did NOT go with the flow of how I'd written the story. *sigh* Let's just say I took some biiiiiiig artistic licenses with this.

Sam’s always had a memory for dates. It came in pretty handy in history class where he could recite significant dates at the drop of a hat. John Smith arrived in Jamestown in 1607. The Boston Tea Party was in 1773. The Whiskey Rebellion was in 1794. The Battle of Gettsyburg was in 1863. The Dust Bowl began in 1934. The Korean Armistice began in 1953. Nixon resigned over Watergate in 1974.

 

Once he left school those dates lost their prime real estate in his memory bank.

 

Now, September 28, November 2, and December 5 are always at the forefront of his mind when the long, hot days of summer start to grow shorter and cooler with the approach of autumn. These are the days that his brother is guaranteed to drink until his liver throws up a white flag, begging to be saved before it’s pickled.

 

Sam gives Dean his space on these days, but keeps tabs on where he goes so he can drag his drunk ass back to whatever hole-in-the-wall motel room they're staying at. He’ll tuck his unconscious brother into bed, prop him on his side with all of the pillows in the room, and aim his head towards the trashcan on the floor by the bed. Then the next morning, he’ll drive Dean to the nearest diner for a greasy hangover cure and a gallon of tar black coffee.

 

He’s taken care of his brother the same way on these days for the better part of a decade.

 

For the past four years though, there’s been a new drinking holiday on Dean’s calendar – October 11.

 

Sam has no idea what significance the date holds for Dean. To his knowledge nobody they know died on that day. There was no major battle on the supernatural front that day, no particularly devastating case that they’d solved on that day, no reason for Dean’s melancholy on that particular day. He just doesn’t get it.

 

As 2015 wanes into its last quarter, Dean celebrates the 9th anniversary of Dad’s death with his usual bottle of Jose Cuervo. Sam picks him up from the biker bar on Highway 36, about half an hour west of Lebanon, and brings him back to the bunker. It was so much easier when they were living in ground floor motel rooms; now he has to lug 180 pounds of floppy, dead weight down a flight and a half of stairs to get Dean to his room.

 

They hang around Kansas for the next week and a half, never straying too far from the place they now call home. Dean goes on supply runs to restock the kitchen and the Impala. He sharpens their knives, cleans their guns, and repairs anything that’s broken or could work better. Sam works on inputting the Men of Letter’s card catalog into the computer system that Charlie helped him set up when she and Dorothy got back from Oz over the summer. They eat together at night in front of the TV in Sam’s room, marathoning _Game of Thrones,_ _Vikings_ , _The Tudors_ , and _Downton Abbey_. The air between them is more familial than it has been in a while, but there’s still a strange air of being on edge, just bidding time until something else happens.

 

In the early evening of October 7th, Sam walks into library with a fresh cup of coffee after checking on Dean’s progress in the kitchen. The reading table looks like some kid’s art project has exploded all over one end of it with dots of glue drying on the tabletop, thin slivers of paper cuttings scattered over everything like confetti, and sheets of laminate and empty badge holders heaped haphazardly next to the empty cigar box. Dean had been in the middle of updating all of their fake IDs ( _thank you FBI for changing how your badge looks, again_ ) when he decided to take a break to make dinner.

 

Sam snorts when he picks up the Bikini Inspector ID Dean had made for him. God, that was a million lifetimes ago.

 

Sitting down in Dean’s vacated chair, he thumbs through IDs from the CDC, Homeland Security, the Texas State Police, the North Carolina Highway Patrol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and hospitals and colleges all across the country. They aren’t quite as creative as they used to be, mainly sticking to their FBI aliases when they need to interact with local authorities.

 

Sam flicks open the lid on the box where they store their IDs, expecting it to be empty, and finds a plain white, letter sized envelope tucked away inside. _Agent R. Plant_ is written in unfamiliar, blocky handwriting on the front. The return address in the corner is for the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana. Curious, he bends back the flap and pulls out a single sheet of letterhead.

 

 

> _March 23, 2010_
> 
>  
> 
> _Agent Plant,_
> 
>  
> 
> _Based on analysis of the samples you’ve provided to our lab, we can say without a doubt that you are looking for two suspects. There is a 99.9% probability that Sample A is the father of Sample B._
> 
>  
> 
> _Good luck with your case._
> 
>  
> 
> _Sincerely,_
> 
> _V. Masuka_
> 
> _Lead Forensics Investigator_
> 
> _Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office_

 

It’s weird that Dean held on to something like this, a random letter from a five-year-old case. He starts to toss it in the wastebasket next to the table when the sheriff's office address printed at the bottom of the page catches his eye.

 

 _Indiana_.

 

 _2010_.

 

He minimizes the photo editing software on Dean’s laptop and calls up the web browser to do a quick search for _Hamilton County, IN_.

 

 _Cicero's in Hamilton County_.

 

Shit.

 

He scrambles out of the chair and to the other end of the table where he’d been using Dean’s journal to cross reference some old MoL information about the Shōjō with new information from their case in Junction City three years ago. He flips through the pages until he finds his brother’s entry on the Changeling that had been stealing kids in Lisa Braeden’s neighborhood in Cicero.

 

 _October 11, 2007_.

 

 _Ben’s birthday party_.

 

Sam sinks down in the chair with one hand resting on the open journal and the other clutching the letter. His mind skips over the facts over and over again.

 

Dean got the letter from the crime lab in March, but he didn’t leave Lisa and Ben until May of that year.

 

 _He knew_. Sam closes his eyes at the realization.

 

When Castiel erased all memory of him from Lisa and Ben, Dean knew that Ben was his kid.   He knew and still he walked away to protect them from the life he lived.

 

Sam folds the letter, before dropping it down on table and lifting a heavy hand to massage his brow.

 

“Dinner time!” Dean calls, unaware, from the kitchen.

 

“Coming!” Sam yells back. Quickly, he retrieves the envelope, stuffing the letter inside, and carefully puts it back in the cigar box, hoping it won’t look like it’s been disturbed.   He stares down at the envelope where it lays in the bottom of the box, waiting to be covered up again with fake IDs. After another moment, he closes the box’s lid.

 

Another Winchester is growing up with an absent father. Sam can only hope that Ben stays safe and alive because of it, for Dean’s sake.

**Author's Note:**

> Dates of Significance:  
> Mom’s birthday - 12/5/54 (DOB given on Supernatural Wiki)  
> Mom died – 11/2/83  
> Ben’s birthday – 10/11/99 (month/day = air date of _The Kids Are Alright_ in 2007)*  
>  Dad died – 9/28/06 (air date of _In My Time of Dying_ )*
> 
> Supernatural Wiki lists Ben's DOB as May 1999 and lists the date of John's death as July 19, 2006. 
> 
> ARGH!
> 
> Also, did anybody notice the cameo I threw in? :)


End file.
